Abstract
We report the experimental study of field-free molecular alignment in CO gas mixtures induced by intense femtosecond laser pulses in the presence of collisional processes. We demonstrate that the alignment signals exhibit specific features due to nontrivial collisional propensity rules that tend to preserve the orientation of the rotational angular momentum of the molecules. The analysis is performed with a quantum approach based on the modeling of rotational - and -dependent state-to-state transfer rates. The present work paves the way for strong-field spectroscopy of collisional dynamics.
- Received 18 July 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.87.023409
©2013 American Physical Society
